The Cairo semi-official newspaper Al Ahram reported here today that Secretary-General U Thant’s personal Middle East peace representative, Dr. Jarring, has asked Mr. Thant to relieve him of his duties as of Nov. 8. A UN spokesman said there is no truth to the report that Dr. Jarring has resigned or requested to resign. Diplomatic observers here, however, commented that if Dr. Jarring has indeed so acted, his move was a tactic to pressure the Israelis and Arabs to demonstrate to him that there is some movement toward peace.
There was an implication in comments made yesterday to the press by the new United States Ambassador to the UN, J. R. Wiggins, that Dr. Jarring may be contemplating the end of his mission. Mr. Wiggins said that Dr. Jarring, whom he saw for the first time yesterday morning, was “justifiably anxious” to see some “movement.” Mr. Wiggins said that Dr. Jarring “has separated himself from his family and from his official post (Sweden’s envoy to Russia), and it would seem to me that it would be inevitable that he would not wish to protract such an exercise interminably and indefinitely in the absence of concrete and definite signs of progress.”
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